Would All the People in the World Fit in Colorado?

If you gathered all the people of the world into one place to form one large group, would they all fit in Colorado?

The short answer is, yes, all the people in the world, would fit in the state of Colorado easily. I will try and  put it in perspective for you.

According to Worldometersinfo, the world's population reached 7 billion people in 2011, so for the sake of this discussion, we'll use that figure.

It's difficult to comprehend, but I have often tried to imagine what billions of people would look like if they were all together standing in one large group.

Let's suppose that each person, standing upright, would occupy one square foot of ground space. There are 27,875,400 square feet in a square mile, so for this discussion we are going to cram more than 27 million people in each square mile.

You would need about 250 square miles in order to put all the people in the world in one place at the same time.

Stay with me.

How big is 250 square miles? It's roughly the land area of cities like El Paso, Texas, and Virginia Beach -- and just slightly larger than the land area of Chicago. So, essentially, the entire world would fit into one of these cities.

Another way to look at it is this -- this is a rough estimate -- you could line up people for a mile either side of I-70, and stretch that line from Grand Junction to Eagle.

Try this. The land area of Grand Junction is about 38 square miles. Imagine 6-1/2 Grand Junction's clumped together in a cluster. That is how much land area you would need to gather the world's population into one place.

It's extremely difficult to imagine exactly what seven billion people would look like, but hopefully this gives you a little bit of perspective and helps give you an idea of how big the world really is. Yes, you COULD put the world's population in Colorado, but let's not try.